Girl Scouts, 4-H stress conservation and sustainability

Julie ConcannonMultnomah County Girl Scouts participating in EcoGIG watch for migratory plovers at the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge last summer near Newport. The girls -- including (from left) Karlee Hoff, Kristi Fukunaga, Angela Lewis and Emily England (back to camera) -- were waiting for a single plover that was banded with a radio transmitter and tracked on its flight from San Francisco. Also pictured is an unidentified U.S. Fish and Wildlife staffer (at spotting scope) and parent volunteers Kate England (black hat) and Susan Olson (with binoculars).

Fifteen-year-old Christina Mulch might have found her future last summer, holding an angry young hawk in her arms while a band was clipped to its leg. The ferruginous hawk is a threatened species, and Mulch joined a group of about 20 Portland-area Girl Scouts at the Thousand Springs Preserve in south-central Idaho to help survey chicks.

Working long hours in blistering heat, the girls banded the frightened chicks -- 18 inches tall, with two-inch talons and drooling from fear.

"I'd never really thought about all the endangered species and how we can help them," said Mulch, a Grant High School freshman. "It's gotten me more interested. I think I might go into a career in science."

Youth organizations like the Scouts were founded on instilling in children a respect for nature and care for their communities. Now, however, with worldwide attention on threatened species, threatened resources and the need for energy alternatives, those organizations are providing a wider array of experiences to young people, knowing they will be the ones affecting future change.

"We want to go beyond simply educating kids about sustainability and green practices," said Roger Rennekamp, head of the Oregon State University Extension Service 4-H youth development program. "We want young people to be advocates in their community."

After a five-year absence, 4-H has returned to Multnomah County with an emphasis on sustainability. Local Girl Scouts just completed a nine-month, science-based project at several Western refuges in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The annual tree planting, begun after the Tillamook Burn in the 1930s, remains one of the most popular projects of the Cascade Pacific Council Boy Scouts of America. Council Scouts have planted more than 2 million trees since the project began.

"We were green before green was used that way," said Don Cornell, director of field services for the Cascade Pacific Council, which serves about 30,000 children in 18 counties.

Boy Scouts of two generations ago completed outdoor projects for the nature merit badge, which is required to achieve Eagle Scout. But changing times led the Scouts to shift the badge's focus to environmental sciences.

"When a boy joins Boy Scouting, the first thing he has to do is learn the outdoor code," Cornell said. "Being clean in outdoor manners, being conservation-minded at all times. And that sets the stage culturally in everything we do. Conservation and sustainability is always a piece of our program."

Most merit badges have some sustainable component, Cornell said. For instance, the papermaking merit badge requires Scouts to describe how manufacturers of paper deal with sustainability and environmental issues.

Five years ago, Multnomah County cut its funding for extension services and 4-H. The service remained a presence with offices for its statewide wildlife stewards program at Sunnyside Environmental School in Southeast Portland, but the traditional 4-H clubs and extension programs were discontinued.

Support from Sunnyside's parent-teacher-student association and Principal Sarah Taylor and funding from Oregon State revitalized the 4-H youth program and extension services. 4-H hired a sustainability coordinator -- funded from fundraising by the PTSA -- who works specifically with Sunnyside students. A new extension service administrator will oversee Multnomah and Washington counties.

Jon Mayer, a former recreation coordinator for the Oregon Department of Forestry, will coordinate the 4-H youth program out of the Sunnyside office.

After only a week on the job, Mayer said he is just beginning to learn what the community wants from 4-H but expects it will be a combination of traditional clubs, after-school classes and summer camps.

The programs will lean heavily on sustainability issues, from backyard gardening to raising chickens to community landscaping with native plants.

"We want to provide the things that people need and want," Mayer said. "Once you let kids practice what they learn and they succeed, they take that lesson out into the community and it keeps spreading."

Getting more Girl Scouts interested in conservation biology prompted Julie Concannon to put together an ambitious project, financed with about $30,000 in grants from U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

Concannon, the regional natural resources damage assessment and restoration coordinator for the federal agency, worked with 21 teenage girls from Multnomah County who committed to 40 hours of research and restoration work on several Western refuges.

"They wanted to travel," Concannon said. "And they wanted to touch. They wanted to be hands-on, with birds and with wildlife."

EcoGIG -- for Girls in Green -- measured trees at the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, counted salamanders and wrote poetry at the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, and planted endangered plants for endangered birds at the Hakalau Forest National Refuge near Hilo, Hawaii.

The Hawaii trip stood out for 14-year-old Karlee Hoff, a Mount Tabor Middle School eighth-grader. The girls stayed up late one night to count the endangered honu or green turtles, and spent a day as guardians for turtles basking on the beach.

"People would ask us questions and it was cool to be able to tell them about the turtles," said Hoff, who helped create a DVD and podcast about the refuge work for her Girl Scout silver project.

Several other girls led 100 schoolchildren to study salamanders at Willapa as part of their silver project.

Work on the refuges, and especially the visit to Thousand Springs, fed Mulch's love of science and her desire to help endangered species. When an internship came up at the Oregon Zoo, Mulch quickly submitted an application and letters of recommendation.

"Going into the EcoGIG project, I didn't really know what to expect," Mulch said. "I thought it was just volunteer work. It turned out to be more than that. We got to do some really cool things. We got to help the world."